Pilot's alphabet fun!

Josh's grandpa has a pilot's license and he flies a Bonanza aircraft (N7745R).  Josh had his first ride in it over Thanksgiving, and he did fairly well. The headphones finally fit him and his ears were well protected (major relief for me, since I was worried about the potential for acoustic trauma).

At dinner tonight, I thought I'd try to teach Josh the pilot's alphabet, so he could learn the code words that stand for each letter of the alphabet. Normally, pilots have to say the code word for each letter, since their letters can get scrambled or misunderstood over the radio. I thought it would be a fun experiment to see if Josh could understand the concept of a code for the alphabet. So far, he is having fun with it. We ended up spelling family members' names with the code and he got a kick out of that! The first one we tried was "Mommy" = Mike, Oscar, Mike, Mike, Yankee. He just cracked up with repetition of "Mike, Mike" for "m, m."

(By the way, this is how to say the name of the aircraft: "November 7-7-4-5 Romeo." Cool, huh?)

So here's the Pilot's Alphabet for you to teach your kids, if you are interested:

Pilot's Alphabet

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A		Alpha		N		November
B		Bravo		O		Oscar
C		Charlie		P		Papa
D		Delta		Q		Quebec
E		Echo		R		Romeo
F		Foxtrot		S		Sierra
G		Golf		T		Tango
H		Hotel		U		Uniform
I		India		V		Victor
J		Juliet		W		Whiskey
K		Kilo		X		X ray
L		Lima		Y		Yankee
M		Mike		Z		Zulu